


now my body is starting to quiver

by badritual



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Don't copy to another site, M/M, Magic Gives Them the Nudge to Do What They've Wanted to Do For Years, Magic Made Them Do It, POV Dean Winchester, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, mild wingkink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:54:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual
Summary: Of course Cas had to go and touch the magic artifact. With bare hands.“I feel…” Cas trails off, fingers creeping up to the unevenly knotted blue tie around his neck.“Well, that can’t be good,” Dean says.Cas shouldn't have touched the magic artifact!
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 103
Collections: fandomtrees





	now my body is starting to quiver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jena Bartley (jenab)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenab/gifts).



> Written for [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/jenab/profile)[**jenab**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/jenab/) for [](http://fandomtrees.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fandomtrees**](http://fandomtrees.dreamwidth.org/).
> 
> Timeline-wise, I was kind of mentally shoving this somewhere in the midst of s8 or thereabouts. At the very least, it’s nebulously post-6x03 (ep where the handprint was first shown to be absent). Also, there’s no real reason for the Samulet to be here but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. Lastly, the goddess isn't meant to be an actual existing goddess. 
> 
> Title from "Fool In the Rain" by Led Zeppelin. Leave me alone!!!
> 
> Eternal thanks to [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/petramacneary/profile)[**petramacneary**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/petramacneary/) for helping wrangle this into shape! I added roughly 1100+ words after she beta'd so any remaining mistakes are on my ledger and not hers!
> 
>  **Additional Notes/Warnings:** Re. the "magic made them do it," Dean isn't affected by the magical artifact while Cas is. I don't consider this dubcon, since they both want to do it, but YMMV. There's also a brief reference to/some internal Dean-monologue in relation to the Dean-did-sexwork theory.

_Hands off the magic artifacts._

Dean figures that has to be rule number one in the unofficial Hunter’s Handbook. If there even _is_ an official Hunter’s Handbook. Which there isn’t. But if it exists, it’s definitely in there, underlined, in bold all-caps font. 

Or at least, don’t touch the magic artifacts without taking the proper precautions. Pair of gloves, a ten-foot pole. Maybe keep a spell on hand to counteract whatever the hell you’re gonna be coming into contact with.

Of course Cas had to go and touch the magic artifact. With bare hands.

“I feel…” Cas trails off, fingers creeping up to the unevenly knotted blue tie around his neck. 

“Well, that can’t be good,” Dean says. 

Cas loosens the knot with shaky fingers, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Precisely,” he mutters, sotto voce. “Is it just me, or did the temperature of this suspiciously poorly-fortified crypt just increase by a noticeable amount?”

Dean frowns, brow furrowing. “What?” 

Cas yanks the tie free and lets it slither out of his hand to the stone floor. “What I am saying,” he enunciates painstakingly slowly, “is it’s getting hot in here.”

“And you’re gonna take off all your clothes,” Dean supplies helpfully. 

Cas cocks his head at Dean, eyes narrowing to squinty, suspicious slits. “You’re not funny.”

Dean averts his gaze from the triangle of pink skin at Cas’s throat. His eyes fall on the artifact Cas had brushed against: a statue of a plump, extremely _naked_ woman. Some fertility goddess, or thereabouts. 

Wait a frickin’ minute.

 _Shit_ , Dean thinks. “Shit.”

“What? What is it,” Cas asks.

“Uh, Cas.” Dean stabs a finger in the direction of the figurine. “Did you touch that statue?”

Cas is busy divesting himself of his white button-down. His beige trench coat lays in a puddle at his feet, and his blue suit coat is half on and half off, pinning his arms against his sides. His dark hair is damp and matted against his forehead and the sides of his face. 

“I’m so hot, Dean. I’m going to burn alive,” Cas moans pathetically, as he struggles to shrug out of the blue jacket.

“Here. Uh, let me help you.” Dean strides forward and tugs the suit coat off. His fingers inadvertently brush against a strip of bare pink skin that peeks out of Cas’s shirt collar. 

Cas shudders and edges away from Dean’s searching fingers, pressing his back against the bare stone wall. He blurts out, “Don’t come any closer,” and Dean pulls up short.

“Why not?” Dean drops the jacket atop the trench coat that lay in a heap at Cas’s feet.

“I’m cursed.” Cas flicks his eyes to the hateful figurine. 

Dean sighs and rubs a thumb between his eyebrows to smooth out the crinkle currently forming in his brain. “Since when have I ever cared about that?”

Cas slips out of the white dress shirt next. “I don’t want you to see me like this, Dean,” he says, as his hands begin to fumble with his belt buckle. 

“What’s it telling you to do?” Dean asks, moving closer. 

“She’s whispering to me,” Cas says, stilling his fingers over his fly. “Telling me to strip myself completely and…”

“And?” Dean prompts, putting his hands out to Cas like he’s a wild animal that needs taming.

Cas’s eyes fall to Dean’s open palms. His lashes flutter and Dean swallows hard, breath sticking in his throat. _God. Keep it in your pants, Winchester. For Christ’s sake._

“I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Just tell me what it’s saying,” Dean insists, stretching his hands out closer, closer. 

“She’s saying that I—” Cas falters again, cheeks pinking. “I should—I need to make a sacrifice.”

Dean frowns, eyes flitting about the dim chamber—dancing briefly over that damn statue—before settling back on Cas. He doesn’t see any goats or magic herbs or whatever that’d be suitable for a sacrifice. “Care to elaborate?”

“An offering,” Cas says. He lurches forward, toward Dean’s hands, close enough that Dean can feel the heat rolling off of him, before stopping himself and jerking back. “Of myself.”

“She—” Dean jabs his thumb over his shoulder at the figurine “—wants you to offer yourself to me?”

“No. She wants me to offer us,” Cas corrects, eyes darting downward, to a space somewhere between their feet, “to her.”

Realization dawns, and with it comes a sudden hot blastwave of clarity. 

“The goddess wants us to fuck for her.”

“Dean!” Cas almost sounds _offended_ , and if the situation weren’t already so absurd Dean would laugh. 

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Dean asks, trying not to smile, focusing very intently on smoothing out the dimples that threaten to show and give away his whole game. 

“In not so many words,” Cas grumbles. 

Dean reaches up and gently slides the leather cord of his necklace from around his neck. “Okay. All right, then.”

“What are you doing?” Cas asks as he makes a show of reluctantly kicking off his immaculately pressed navy trousers. 

Dean tucks the amulet in the front pocket of his jacket and pats it, as if to reassure himself that it’ll be there when they’re—Christ, when they’re done here. “What do you think, Einstein?” 

“I told you, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t—”

“Who says I don’t want to?” Dean shrugs out of the jacket and makes short work of his flannel and henley. “Maybe I do.”

Cas nods slowly, pressing his lips into a thin line. Coming to a decision, Dean thinks. “Right. You seem to be taking this in stride.”

Dean has the forethought to fish his wallet out of his jeans pocket and produce a condom and a little travel packet of lube. He cocks a grin Cas’s way. “That’s my middle name.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cas says, crossing his arms over his bare chest. 

Dean flicks his eyes over Cas’s body; it’s a decent body, he thinks. Well-formed, strong, muscular. No scars, pockmarks, or blemishes because Cas had healed all of Jimmy Novak’s old wounds, including the mortal stab wound in his belly. 

Dean wonders what Jimmy would think if he was still in there somewhere. He pulls a face. God, he hopes there’s nothing of Jimmy left in that body. 

“Are you having second thoughts?” Cas asks, sounding almost like he _wants_ Dean to. He looks like he’s ten seconds away from bolting, himself, and accepting whatever terrible fate the goddess will bestow upon him for failing to get Dean to let him sit on his dick.

“No, of course not,” Dean says, scoffing. “I _want_ to do this. It’s my civic duty.”

Cas’s expression slides from vaguely panicked into carefully neutral, and his blue eyes grow arctic. “You’re doing this because you have to. Because I was stupid and touched the magic artifact and I’ll die if you don’t fuck me.”

“Well, now that you put it like that,” Dean jokes, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to landing. It crashes somewhere, in a mangled mess of twisted metal and leaping flames. Cas looks even more uneasy now. “C’mon, man.”

Sighing, Dean kicks aside their tangled pile of clothes and crosses the crypt to Cas. He reaches out, offering his hand palm-up to him. 

Cas tilts his head and squints down at Dean’s palm, as if examining it. As if noticing it for the first time, like he hadn’t expected Dean’s outstretched hand to be attached to the rest of him. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Take my hand,” Dean says.

Cas slides his hand over Dean’s and laces their fingers together. “Okay,” he says, lifting his head. “Now what?” 

“I’m doing this because I want to,” Dean says, squeezing firmly. “You’re my best friend. We’re going to get through this. Together.”

Cas’s hand jerks against Dean’s, but Dean holds on tight. “Dean…” Cas looks up at him with equal amounts adoration and fear warring in his dazzling blue eyes and across his face. 

“If I didn’t want this I wouldn’t have volunteered myself,” Dean says. 

“But—” Cas starts, but Dean cuts him short. 

“I’d do it for anyone I cared about,” Dean says, before pausing. “Well. Maybe not Sam.”

“If Sam’s life was in danger, you probably would,” Cas says, matter-of-factly.

“Ugh.” Dean gags dramatically. “Let’s not.”

“No, you’re right. Let’s not,” Cas agrees. He looks down at their hands, their entwined fingers. 

“Not everyone can say they have a friend who’d be willing to fuck a curse out of them,” Dean brags. 

Cas laughs; it’s weak, a little bit of a put-on, but it’s still a laugh. Dean feels like he’s done something right. He wishes he could chase that feeling—that bright smile that makes him feel dazed and sunblind—to the ends of the earth. 

After he spreads out the trench coat over cool stone, he and Cas settle down beside each other. Dean tries to meet Cas’s eyes, but Cas refuses to lift his head, chin burrowed into his bare chest. 

_Hell of a time to get shy_ , Dean thinks. He reaches out and gently tips Cas’s chin up. 

“It’ll be just like riding a bike,” Dean says, offering Cas a shy smile of his own. 

“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” Cas points out. 

Dean laughs, despite himself. “Well, I can work with that.” 

Dean drops his hand and leans in, brushing his lips lightly over Cas’s, before leaning back ever so slightly to give him some space just in case he needs it. Cas’s breath is warm against his lips, and his skin is hot to the touch. 

There’s something else too—the curse, Dean figures—that’s urging him to pull Cas into his arms. And onto his dick, but he shoves that thought to the side for the time being. He wants to make Cas feel comfortable. Safe. 

_Loved?_ Dean’s stupid, treacherous brain supplies. 

_Shut up_ , Dean thinks back. 

His brain falls blessedly silent.

Cas eases into his arms and starts kissing back tentatively, his big warm hands wandering Dean’s bare sides. His fingers skate over Dean’s ribs, down to his hips and back up, his touch light and almost reverent. 

Dean presses closer, hands sweeping down the smooth expanse of Cas’s bare back. He can feel Cas’s breath hitch against his lips, and Dean sweeps his hands back up, letting them rest over his shoulder blades. 

Cas breaks the kiss and presses his forehead into Dean’s bare shoulder. 

“What is it?” Dean asks. 

“They’re sensitive,” Cas mutters low, under his breath.

Dean presses his lips against the top of Cas’s bowed head. “What are?”

“My wings,” Cas murmurs, shivering closer, fingers digging into Dean’s hip. 

“I don’t feel anything. I can’t see them,” Dean says, a hot sickly feeling curling in his gut like smoke. 

_Jealousy_ , he realizes. He _wants_ to see them and he hates that he can’t, that only special beings with special abilities can stand to be in their full, unfettered presence. He wants to tenderly run his fingers through the feathers and over the delicate joints. Wants to feel Cas’s feathers kissing his bare skin. 

“They’re invisible to the human eye,” Cas whispers into Dean’s shoulder, his breath hot and sticky. “But I can still feel it when you touch me there.”

Dean drags his hands back up to Cas’s shoulders and draws another pleasurable shiver out of him. “I wish I could see them.”

“They’d burn your eyes out,” Cas says, pressing a gentle kiss into the junction where Dean’s neck and shoulder meet. 

“It’d be worth it,” Dean says. He isn’t sure if he’s teasing or not, and he doesn’t feel like turning that thought over and examining it any closer. 

Cas muffles a soft laugh into Dean’s throat. Dean drags his fingers in slow circles over Cas’s shoulder blades, savoring every tremble and shiver, every breath that catches in his throat. 

Dean slides a hand away from Cas’s back and maneuvers it between their waists, letting his fingers graze the front of Cas’s boxers lightly. There’d been a time when he hadn’t been sure if angels could even have sex, and he’d always been too shy to ask. Now it seems a little too late to get that crash course in angel sexuality. 

“It’s okay,” Cas breathes against the shell of Dean’s ear. “You’re nervous. I can tell. My vessel is…well, it’s me, more or less. I’m no longer sharing it with anyone else, if that’s what you’re hesitant about.”

“Oh.” Dean lets his breath out slowly. Something cracks loose in his chest. “That wasn’t what I was worried about, man. I mean, I know Jimmy’s gone and it’s just you in there. I wasn’t…” 

Cas pillows his head on his arm and stills a hand on Dean’s hip. He rubs his thumb over the knob of Dean’s hipbone in slow passes. “Yes?”

“How does this kinda thing work for angels?” Dean asks, hooking his fingertip in the elastic of Cas’s boxers. He snaps it lightly, playfully against his waist. “Like, sex. And stuff.”

Cas laughs. It’s a beautiful sound, like the pealing of church bells. “Angels don’t mate in a way that would be familiar to humans,” he says, as he wriggles in closer to Dean. “Our true forms are difficult for most humans to comprehend. Can you imagine trying to conceptualize two celestial beings the size of skyscrapers…rutting?”

Dean does try to envision it and finds that he can’t. “Less talking” he says, twirling a finger at Cas’s boxers. “More naked.”

Cas sighs and rolls his eyes. “You wanted to know.” He shifts away to slip his boxers off. “Now you.”

Dean complies, quickly stripping himself of his underwear. He flings an arm out and gropes blindly along the floor until his fingers curl around the condom wrapper and the packet of lube. 

“You ready?” he asks, as he tears open the wrapper.

“I can feel the curse working its way through my body as we speak, so yes,” Cas says, tone dry as bone. “Time is, as they say, of the essence.”

Dean curls a fist around his cock and gives it a perfunctory tug, then smoothes the condom down over himself. “All right. Um, how do you wanna do this?”

Cas rolls onto his stomach and props his chin on his fist. “I think… I want to ride you.”

Dean’s brain picks the perfect moment to short-circuit and go offline. He can practically smell smoke in the air. “You, uh. Oh. Okay.”

“You did say it would be like riding a bicycle.” Cas’s beautiful sky-blue eyes glint just with the hint of mischief.

 _Well then._ “You’re the boss.” Dean huffs out a weak laugh. His brain still hasn’t come back online, apparently. “Ready when you are.”

He sits back against the stone wall and spreads his legs out, invitingly. Then he gives his lap a pat, as if Cas hadn’t gotten the hint when Dean rolled on the condom and spread his legs for him. Cas just watches him with hooded eyes, through his thick dark lashes, tongue darting out of his mouth to wet his lips.

_Jesus, fuck._

Dean wonders if he’d gotten himself in over his head. But then Cas leans forward and rests a hand on Dean’s thigh and his brain goes on the fritz again. 

This is really going to happen. Dean is going to fuck his best friend. His only real friend, outside of his brother.

What will they do if it _doesn’t_ work? What will they do if this changes everything?

Dean clasps a hand over Cas’s, briefly, for just a fleeting moment, before he reaches out and hauls him the rest of the way into his lap. 

Cas lands against his chest with a soft _oof_ of surprise. “Straight to the point. I appreciate that.”

Dean lets that pass without comment. “You need anything? Like…” Dean wiggles his fingers in the general vicinity of Cas’s ass. 

“Use your words, Dean,” Cas says, sounding unimpressed. 

Dean resettles against the wall with his arms tight and secure around Cas. “You’re still a virgin. Yeah?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Cas replies, tapping his index finger against his chin. “Chastity and I never got past—”

“Oh no,” Dean says. “Don’t remind me.”

“Do I detect an air of jealousy?” Cas’s eyes are shining far too bright in the dim light. 

“No, of course not,” Dean lies, giving him a gentle shove. “Now, get out of my lap.”

Cas heaves a put-upon sigh, but he crawls out of Dean’s lap and rolls onto his back. Dean glances down at him, the way the faint candlelight gutters and dances over his lines and angles, dusting him in a warm orangey glow. 

He looks beautiful. Goddamn fucking gorgeous. Like a work of art, like some ancient painter’s magnum opus. If Dean had been the one lucky enough to have created Castiel, he would have just stopped right then and there. No reason to keep creating now that he’d achieved perfection. 

God. Maybe Dean’s been infected with this curse too. 

Dean shakes his head, coughs out a laugh behind his fist, and slides between Cas’s thighs. 

“This might get a little messy,” he warns. “And uncomfortable.”

“I think at this point, I am beyond caring how uncomfortable or messy things might get,” Cas says, giving Dean a pointed eyebrow raise. 

Dean feels his cheeks flush with heat and hopes Cas doesn’t notice between the haze of whatever this curse is doing to him and the dimness of the crypt. “Point taken.”

Still, though. Dean wasn’t raised in a barn. He’s a goddamn attentive lover. 

After slicking his fingers with a liberal helping of lube, Dean slips his hand back between Cas’s thighs. It’d been a while since he’d last done this with a guy.

Christ, it’s been _years_. Dad had taken off on another obsessive crusade of his—a ghoul preying on pregnant women, if he remembers correctly—and it’d been up to Dean to put food on the table and keep a roof over his and Sammy’s heads. And he’d found a way. He hadn’t been proud of it, but it’d kept himself and Sammy afloat, healthy if not happy, stomachs full. It was honest work and yet he still burns with shame at the thought of confessing it to Cas, who he knows wouldn’t judge him for it.

“You’re thinking.” Cas’s gravel-laden voice slices through Dean’s unwanted reverie. 

“Just thinking that I haven’t done this in a long time,” he admits, cheeks flaring with old shame and regret.

Cas pushes himself up and ducks his head until Dean meets his gaze. “I don’t suppose you’d like to talk about it,” he says, and Dean shakes his head _no_. “I won’t push.”

Dean strokes Cas’s thigh in gentle circles. “Just old shit I thought I’d buried.”

Cas covers Dean’s hand and stills it over his thigh. “We don’t have to do this.”

“Cas,” Dean rasps, choking on it. 

“Maybe I can survive the curse,” Cas says, jerking his shoulder in an awkward shrug. “I’m an angel. I’ve survived worse.”

“But you don’t know if you can,” Dean protests. “And we can’t take that chance.”

“But if you can’t—” Cas says, but Dean surges forward and swallows the rest of his argument in an urgent kiss. 

This is Cas. Cas is good, wonderful, and Dean—Dean needs him. Cas had fit himself into the life Dean forged for himself and Sam without Dean ever really even noticing. The thought of Cas _not_ being there, of Cas being sliced out of his life scares the shit out of him. _Shakes_ him to his foundations. 

So Dean knots his fingers in the soft hair at the back of Cas’s neck and holds onto him like he doesn’t know if Cas will still be there should he let go. Because he doesn’t. All he knows is he can’t let go of him. And he won’t let him suffer this curse alone, not if there’s something he can do to make it better for him. 

Dean breaks the kiss and presses his forehead against Cas’s. “I’m okay,” he says, feeling Cas’s lips part against his to protest, or maybe to kiss him back. “It’s okay, Cas.”

“You’re sure?” Cas asks, his hands moving over Dean’s back in hesitant, feather-light touches.

“I’m sure,” Dean says, pressing a chaste kiss against the corner of Cas’s mouth. “I want this. I want _you_ , okay? This doesn’t have to change anything.”

“How can it not?” Cas asks, bowing his head against Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “Because it just doesn’t,” he says, which isn’t really much of an answer. “Because maybe…”

He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He’s not even sure he knows what the answer is. All he knows is what he _wants_ it to be. But there are so many unknowns, so many variables, so many ways this could all go wrong or blow up in their faces. The thought of actually going through with this and having it not work wraps itself around Dean’s ribs in a viselike grip and gives him a savage squeeze. What will he do if he still loses Cas anyway, after everything?

“No, I understand,” Cas says into Dean’s shoulder, muffled, hot puffs of air against sweat-slick skin.

Dean eases Cas back onto the coat and leans over him. “Enough talking.”

Cas nods, gnaws on his bottom lip, and runs his hand slowly up Dean’s arm, up to his shoulder where his handprint had once been. 

Dean closes his eyes; he holds himself still, unable and unwilling to move, reluctant to break contact. Skin to skin, soul to soul. Something deep within him recognizes Cas’s hand on him and it unfurls like long curling ribbons, calls out to _Cas_. 

Cas draws Dean closer, parting his legs a little bit more to fit him between his thighs. 

“All right,” says Dean, leaning back down to brush his lips over Cas’s again. “Let’s do this.”

He thinks he’s talking more to himself than Cas at this point. Cas just nods, giving Dean’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before slipping away. 

Dean presses a finger into Cas, slowly, stroking at his hip with his other hand. Cas’s hand returns to Dean’s shoulder and grips tightly as he works his finger deeper, then adds a second one. Dean goes completely still again, waiting, wondering if Cas will ask for more or tell him to stop. 

“Is that—are you—” Dean stammers. 

It feels, suddenly, like he can’t breathe, like he’s being held underwater. Like all the air’s been sucked out of his lungs. It doesn’t feel like a _bad_ thing, though. Dean’s had his share of panic attacks, these painful paroxysms of terror that had tightened around his chest, wrapped around him so securely he felt like he’d never break free. This feels—it feels different, reverent. It feels like awe. 

Cas gives him a short nod. “I’m good. Keep—keep moving. Please,” he chokes out.

“Shit, fuck, yeah. Sorry.” Dean’s breath punches out of his lungs in short bursts. He strokes his fingers deeper, gaze latched to the corner of Cas’s mouth. He watches closely, tracing the movement of Cas’s tongue as it darts from between his lips to swipe at the corner of his mouth. 

Cas starts moving with him, against him, and Dean can feel him loosen up a little bit, tension leaking out of his muscles. It’s not long before Cas is loose-limbed and warm and _open_ , letting out these little gasps and soft sighs. 

_You’d do this forever just to keep hearing those noises_ , Dean’s brain pipes up cheerily. 

Dean doesn’t tell it to shut up this time. 

“You good?” Dean grunts.

“Yes,” Cas says. 

“All right then.” Dean levers himself over Cas and gazes down at him, letting his eyes trail over his face, down his neck, over the slope of one of his shoulders. Cataloguing the splash of freckles across his stomach, the lack of scars and marks, the dusting of hair down his belly. 

Cas pops one eye open. “I can feel your eyes on me,” he says. 

“Sorry.” Dean isn’t sorry. He reaches down, gives Cas’s hip a reassuring squeeze, and lifts his leg over his shoulder. 

As he slowly guides himself home, Dean thinks he should be more worried. He should be having a freakout, maybe, that he’s fucking his best friend. His best friend, who is currently wearing another man’s body as a suit. 

Dean thinks he should be worried that they might not survive this, that _Cas_ might not, that the curse might not let up its hold over Cas. That he might fucking lose him after all of this—and Jesus, Dean isn’t prepared to deal with that, so he violently shoves the thought away. 

He should be more worried, but the thing of it is he’s not. Somehow, this all just feels right. 

“Stop thinking so loudly,” Cas says. 

“You can read my thoughts?” Dean frowns down at Cas, going still over him. 

“Not exactly. But when you’re thinking as loud as you currently are, it’s hard not to eavesdrop a little bit,” Cas says. 

Dean laughs and ducks down to seize Cas’s mouth in a kiss. “All right,” he says, reluctantly dragging himself away. “I’ll turn down the volume.”

Cas laughs too, his hand finding its way back to Dean’s shoulder and squeezing firmly. Something electric jolts through Dean’s skin, even though the scar, the handprint’s long gone. It’s like his soul just knows. 

And that’s when Dean knows too. 

Dean leans down and licks into Cas’s mouth, slowly, savoring the taste of him. The way his tongue feels playing back against Dean’s. Dean’s suddenly very aware of the way Cas’s calf presses into his shoulder and how his nails dig lightly into Dean’s bicep.

He doesn’t think it’ll take either of them very long. Whether it’s because of the curse—maybe more of a blessing than a curse, now that he thinks of it—or because they’ve both been keyed up for a while, Dean can’t say for sure. All he knows is there’s a familiar pressure building inside him, begging for release. 

They move together like they’ve been doing this all along, like maybe they’ve been doing this from the start. Dean rises, Cas falls. Cas crashes against Dean like the ocean crashes into the surf, and vice versa.

It’s perfect. It’s better than all the feverish dreams Dean’s been squirreling away for later, when he’s alone in his Bunker bedroom or sharing a dingy motel room with Sam.

At some point, Dean laced his fingers with Cas’s and now he’s got his hands pinned over his head. Cas has his head tipped back, throat exposed, so Dean leans in and presses an open-mouthed kiss under his jawline, against the exposed triangle of skin he’d been admiring earlier. Cas tastes like sweat and crypt dust, his damp skin warm against Dean’s lips. 

Dean loses himself in the sensations. In the way Cas’s skin feels, sliding under his hands and against his own skin. And his breath, the way it gusts warm and sweet against his lips when he ducks in for kisses. He can’t help but think he’s cataloguing all the moments and feelings, tucking them away to examine later, when everything’s a little less urgent. 

He wonders if Cas will want to do this again, with him, after the magic’s out of his system. He finds himself hoping he will.

Dean lets go of Cas’s hands to clasp at his hips and then he’s flipping them, rolling Cas on top of him. He lets his hands slide to Cas’s thighs, which bracket his hips now.

Cas peers down at him, face flushed and hair wild. “What—”

“You said you wanted to go for a ride,” Dean manages. “So, let’s go.”

Cas huffs out a laugh and rests his hands over Dean’s shoulders, digging his fingers in. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Dean agrees.

Cas is still laughing as he flexes his thighs around Dean’s hips, then carefully—almost experimentally—lifts himself off of Dean. 

Dean relaxes his grip on Cas and Cas lowers himself back down, seating himself fully on Dean’s cock. 

Dean tightens his grip on Cas’s waist involuntarily, fingers clenching, before he lets up. 

“How’s that feel,” Cas murmurs.

“Think I should be asking you that,” Dean huffs out.

“Good,” Cas says. “Better than good.” He pauses, tilting his head, brow scrunching. “I’m starting to feel more myself now, too.”

Dean gives Cas a slight nod. Enough talking, he thinks. He’s kind of done with the talking. 

Cas must agree because he lapses into silence too. Soon, the only sounds that Dean can hear are them, their slick bodies sliding against one another, the puffs of their mingled breaths, the way the fabric of the coat rustles underneath their bodies. He can still taste Cas on his tongue and smell him in the air.

Dean gazes up at him, hands coming to rest lightly over his wrists. Cas’s fingers are still clenching at Dean’s shoulders, face screwed up in determination, eyes squeezed shut. Sweat drips down the sides of his face, glistens on his neck, collects in the dips and valleys of his collar bones. 

He feels a familiar tug deep within, but it’s too soon. He can’t come without Cas. That won’t break the hold the statue has over him. 

Dean disentangles his hand from the trench coat under them and wraps it around his cock, squeezing at the base to stave off the sensation he feels building inside him. 

“Y—you close?” he manages. 

Cas’s forehead creases but he doesn’t open his eyes. “I think so.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m about to blow.” Dean lets go and resettles his hands over Cas’s thighs, gripping tightly. 

Cas’s eyes blink open at that. Candlelight clings to his face and shadows pool in the hollow of his throat. “Already?”

Dean roughly clears his throat. “Fuck, Cas.”

“That’s what we’re doing, yes,” Cas says, but he smiles, and Dean can’t help but smile back, the little shit. 

He bends down until he looks like he’s been folded in half and slides his hands over Dean’s sweaty face. He pauses for a moment, his face hovering close, lips close enough to touch. Dean wonders if he’s going to kiss him and hopes he will. 

“Cas?” Dean arches up, cups the back of his head and curls his fingers in Cas’s hair. But not to pull him down, not to complete the kiss he knows they both want. Just to hold him close. 

Cas dips his head and his breath teases across Dean’s mouth. “Regardless of how this plays out,” Cas says into Dean’s mouth, “I just wanted to thank you. For—for everything.”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut tight. “It’ll work.”

Cas presses his lips against Dean’s. He can feel Cas trembling lightly against him, and he’s not sure if it’s the emotion of the moment or if he’s close to falling. All he knows to do is hold him close and show him through touch that he won’t be doing that alone. Whatever else happens tonight, they’ll face it head-on. They’ll do it together. 

Dean moves a hand between their waists, curling his fingers around Cas’s cock. Cas lets out a soft gasp against Dean’s lips and pushes his hips against his hand. His skin feels overly hot, feverish, and Dean wonders briefly if that’s a good thing. But his mind soon gets drenched in _more, more, get him to do more of those sounds, make him come all over you_ and so that’s what he sets out to do. 

It really doesn’t take much longer for Cas to be shaking against him, breath coming out in stuttering gasps. Dean flicks through the catalogue in his mind, sifting through all of his best moves for one he thinks Cas will like. 

“Dean,” Cas finally chokes out, after what seems like eternity, tapping him on the shoulder. 

“Yeah? It’s go time?” Dean asks. 

Cas hits him again, lightly. “Yes. And don’t say that ever again.”

Dean’s still laughing as Cas throws his head back with a strangled moan, spills over both their hands, and all the candles explode.

***

After, Cas sits crosslegged on the trench coat, fighting with his hair, trying to smooth down a flyaway chunk that just won’t quite lay down across his forehead. Dean reaches over and ruffles his fingers through it, fluffing it back up. 

Cas gives him a stony look, but Dean can see the corners of his mouth twitch up before he smoothes the edges down. 

Dean does his best to affect an air of innocence. “What?” 

“I’d almost had it perfect,” he scoffs. 

“It is,” Dean says. 

Cas’s mouth twitches into a full smile. “You think so?” 

Dean feels like he—both of them—are on the edge of something, some rocky precipice overlooking a bottomless cliff. Normally, Dean would back away from the edge. He’d grab Cas by the arm and pull him along, back to safety. 

But what is safety? Is it edging them both back from the bottomless pit or grasping Cas’s hand and stepping into the unknown together? Making sure neither of them are alone even as they’re falling head over feet? 

“Yeah,” he says, reaching up again to fuss with Cas’s hair some more. “Looks good.”

“So,” Cas says, teasing out a thought. A bunch of expressions Dean has no names for flit across this face he’s come to know so well.

“Yeah?” Dean asks.

“We’re not going to tell Sam about this,” he says, less a question and more a statement of fact. “Right?”

Dean ponders that. Sam sure as hell doesn’t need to know the details, but as for the other stuff… Dean rubs at the back of his neck. “I dunno. What do you wanna do?”

“He doesn’t need to know that I came so hard the—”

“Yeah, no,” Dean jumps in, mostly to chase away the mental image of telling Sam that particular detail. “But the other stuff, sure.”

“The other stuff?” 

Dean watches Cas’s fingers twitch over the lapel of the coat before reaching out, stretching slowly like a shadow over the rough crypt wall. Dean meets him halfway, pressing his fingers back against Cas’s. 

“You’re gonna make me use my words, huh?” Dean squeezes on Cas’s fingers.

“Sure,” Cas says. A smile twitches back onto his face. “I think he’ll notice even if we don’t bring it up.”

“He’s pretty smart,” Dean admits. “Most of the time.”

“He’ll notice.” Cas leans in and brushes a kiss over the corner of Dean’s mouth, lips ending up somewhere near Dean’s earlobe. 

“Probably.” Dean turns his head to catch his lips in a deeper kiss, fingers resting lightly over Cas’s. “Personally, I think it’d be fun to just never bring it up and leave him wondering.”

Cas laughs and Dean thinks, _I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh this much._ Then he feels a bolt of shame that he hasn’t made Cas laugh more often. But when he looks into Cas’s eyes he doesn’t see any recrimination, just pure, unadulterated joy. 

Dean catches him by the back of the neck and hauls him in, knotting his fingers in the hair at Cas’s nape, sealing their mouths together. He kisses Cas so thoroughly and completely, he forgets everything around them. Even the melted candles. Even the curse. Even Sam. 

When they part, Cas presses his forehead against Dean’s, lashes fluttering as his eyes close. 

“It’s gone,” he says.

“Mm?” Dean steals another kiss.

“The curse. Earlier, it felt like vines twisted around my heart,” Cas says, touching his fingertips to the center of Dean’s chest. “And now they’re all gone. Now it’s just…warm. Glowing.”

Dean rests his hands on Cas’s shoulders. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”

“Are you ready to get out of here?” Cas asks. 

“Hell yeah. But first things first.” Dean digs his fingers in the trench coat still spread out underneath them. “We should probably burn this coat.”

“Hey!”


End file.
